No one has been along here for a long time. The path is overgrown but stony so I can see where many feet must have trodden in days gone by. It’s a lovely day for a walk and my spaniel, Maggie, needs the exercise. The sky is a clear, cerulean blue, the blackbirds sing in the hedge and the may blossom is fragrant in the early summer air.
The path seems to be leading downwards and oak trees are closing in on us. It’s cool in their shade and I can hear the soft gurgle of running water. Maggie is sniffing around, whiffling her nose at interesting smells in the hedge and we can wander as far as we want as Cook has baked me some ginger biscuits for my lunch.
Shafts of sunlight flood a woodland glade and I am enchanted, but then disappointed to see people sitting down under a tree. Maggie stops and presses into my leg, whining and shivering.
‘Come on girl,’ I whisper, ‘I think they’re poor people, I don’t think they’ll bother us.’ As we walk into the glade I can see them clearer and I’m horrified, what’s wrong with them?
I don’t like to stop and stare but I feel four pair of eyes on me. They are dressed in rags, a mother and two older children and a toddler lying in her lap. Their eyes beseech me and I hear a quavery voice, ‘Please, food. Have you any food?’
I walk over to them and the smell is appalling. The children are so dirty and the mother’s face has runnels of dirt from the tears on her face. I show them the biscuits.
‘Here, you can share these.’ But she just looks at me so I put the packet on the ground. ‘Look, eat them.’
I can hear Maggie whining and turn to look for her. She is cowering under the trees, by the path and when I turn back the people have gone. But the smell lingers on and the packet is still there so I pick it up again.
I run back to Maggie and try to cheer her, ‘Come on let’s get out of here.’ The sky has gone dark, a chill has set in and I hunch into my silk shawl.
We hurry down the path, ‘Come on Maggie, let’s find a way out. I don’t like it here anymore.’
But we seem to go deeper into the wood and I can feel eyes watching me. I shouldn’t have come, times are still hard: there is a constant stream of starving people on the Kilcrohane road down to Skibbereen. I start to hurry along the path that should bring me out by the old village. There is an old stone cottage round the bend, it looks like a ruin and I just want to hurry by but there is something wrapped in white by the door. I don’t want to look and Maggie is close to me but I can hear the soft thud of a spade in earth.
As we go up close I can see a man digging in the garden or what was once a garden. It is now overgrown and weeds run riot. I stop and watch and he is oblivious to me. I move back in the shade and see him walk to the bundle, hold it up to his face and kiss it. He takes it to the hole in the ground and gently places it in. He is burying a baby, what’s happened? He covers the soil in, tamps it down and leaves the spade by the door. He is a young man but with the skeletal face of starvation and as I watch, with a last, lingering look, he leaves, following the path of those others.
Papa would be angry with me if he knew I was here. I didn’t know these people lived in our woods. I know times are hard as the famine sets in. Why don’t they come to us for help, just because we are Protestant doesn’t mean we will not help them. I look in the cottage, but it is little more than a hovel. There is nothing in there but grey ashes, they have burnt the furniture and eaten every last crumb. Why do these people starve when we have so much?
I turn away and see a man watching me from the other side of the clearing. He looks fierce and I am frightened. His clothes are just rags on his back, the hand that holds the stick is like a claw. His eyes are sunken in his sallow face.
‘You give me money,’ he snarls. ‘You, you’ve got everything. What are you doing here gloating at us?’
‘I have no money, here, have these biscuits.’
He snatched them from my hands and stuffed them in his mouth. ‘Money for food, come on.’
‘I have none.’ I cried. I was frightened, of his face and the stick and the smell.
‘That little chain, that’ll do.’ And he came right up to me and grabbed my pretty gold chain from around my neck.
But it wouldn’t break and he twisted it and I fought him and I heard Maggie barking and as the chain bit deeper into my neck I fell to the ground and screamed, ‘No, no.’ as the blows rained down on me.
A hundred years later, Mick and Katy were thrilled to receive planning permission to build on the plot of land outside the village. The trees had been felled and taken away and a digger brought in to start the footings.
Katy drove up there in the evening, just to see the view, over the valley to the distant hills of Kerry. Dougal, the terrier jumped in the car, bursting with excitement at the prospect of a walk.
‘We’re going up to the site.’ She told him.
It was a lovely evening, warm after a hot summer day and a turquoise and peach sky glowed with the last of the setting sun. She parked the car and let Dougal out but he whined and barked and wouldn’t leave her.
‘Come on, silly, come and look around.’ She walked into the clearing and stopped, puzzled. Someone had been there already. There was a spade on the ground and a hole half dug. A large hole, like a grave gaped up to the evening sky.
Dougal was howling and as she turned she saw a young girl, about fifteen years old, wearing a long, cream dress. A spaniel was by her side, and as Katy watched with horror a man rushed out from the trees and grabbed the girl around the neck.
‘Oh, no, no.’ Gasped Katy. ‘Stop, stop.’ She saw the girl fall to the ground and the man grabbed the spade and hit her. He then turned on the little brown and white spaniel and hit it with the spade. It yelped and slumped to the ground, blood pouring from the side of it’s head.
Katy ran to her car and jumped in, Dougal leaping in after her. She locked the doors and grabbed her mobile phone. She pressed 999 and sobbed, ‘The Garda please. Quick, quick.’ Hurriedly she gabbled her message and tried to explain where she was.
She didn’t want to look out of the window at the girl, lying sprawled on the ground and the little dog with his bloody head. ‘Oh God, Dougal, what’s happened?’ She’d got nothing to defend herself with, in the car. Not even an umbrella.
She heard the sirens coming from a long way away but when she looked back in the clearing there was nothing there. No bodies, no trees, no hole in the ground.
‘Miss…’ The officer opened her door. ‘Are you all right, you’re as white as a sheet. Have you seen a ghost?’
‘I think I have, more than one. Over there, a man killed a young girl and her dog. There was a hole in the ground.’
He looked at her strangely. ‘You’re not from round here?’
‘No, we’re from Cork, we’re going to build a house here.’
‘I don’t think you’ll want to, Miss, not when you know what happened here before. There’s no one buried here now, they found the girl and the man was hung for murder.’
‘Did they find the dog?’
‘What dog?’
